


I'll lie, I'll lie, then come out clean.

by SilverMyfanwy



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: ARGH, Coming Out, Confessions, First Kiss, Illness, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, Panic Attacks, Robots, Tags Are Hard, Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 16:58:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15823134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverMyfanwy/pseuds/SilverMyfanwy
Summary: It takes one emergency operation, two prosthetic arms, a week of no hair-brushing, a dose of anesthesia and some machete-wielding robots for Steve to realise his feelings for Bucky, and even after that it takes an overheard monologue for Bucky to find out about it.





	I'll lie, I'll lie, then come out clean.

**Author's Note:**

> This feels like a mess. Some of it was written very late at night when I should have been going to sleep, see if you can guess which bit.  
> Enjoy :)

They were cornered, not that the enemy had realised and taken advantage of it yet. Not that the enemy could ever have much of an advantage when they were up against Bucky Barnes with a machine gun and Captain America with his shield and the enemy was some machete-wielding robots.

Steve and Bucky had their backs pressed against a sheer rock face and were standing on a shallow ledge above a twenty-foot drop to a lake. Tony was covering Bruce, who was trying to shut down the robots which seemed to be controlled by some sort of blue plant, rather than by a computer as they had expected.

One of the robots, which, despite being on the same ledge as Steve and Bucky had not yet realised where they were, squeaked and turned around to face them. It started approaching, machetes slicing through the air right at knee level.

“Can’t shock it, can’t shield it.” Steve muttered. “Jump on three. One, two, three.”

They jumped and fell, not for the first time.

They hit the water and were momentarily blinded by the amount of bubbles created. Steve panicked, unable to see Bucky who vanished behind the bubbles. Then he saw a flash of shining metal rising up towards the surface and calmed, kicking himself up to get air. Bucky surfaced moments before him, hair plastered to his face, as was his bandanna.

“You good?” Steve croaked and spat out a mouthful of water.

Bucky nodded and began to swim towards the shoreline.

“INCOMING!” Sam yelled above them and Steve looked up to see him hovering over the lake, holding one of the robots. “I’m gonna drop it, get out of the way!”

Steve swam away from the drop zone and turned to see the robot fall, machetes flailing, into the water. The last droplets of the splash caught his face and the last pieces of shrapnel from the following explosion rained down on the shoreline.

“Don’t drop the robots in the lake!” Sam yelled and flew off.

Steve reached the shoreline and found Bucky scowling at his arm, which was whirring and clicking worryingly. “You okay Buck?”

“I’m fine, but some of the robot’s-” he broke off to slap his metal arm with his flesh one and screamed, doubling over in pain. “Get Stark down here now,” he panted to Steve, “before I rip my arm off myself and do even more damage to it.”

Steve floundered, unsure of what to do. The coms were down, thanks to the lake water, and Sam and Tony had both vanished along with everyone else. He did the only thing he could think of and cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed. “HELP!”

Bucky, who was now writhing in pain on the floor with his metal arm flailing madly, gave Steve a look of utter incredulity. “Really?”

“It’s all I can think of!” he crouched down beside Bucky’s head. He reached out a hand to tentatively touch his metal arm and then flinched away. “Ow! It’s burning hot!”

“Tell me something I don’t know!” Bucky said through gritted teeth.

The familiar sound of the engine on Tony’s Iron Man suit came into range and he landed next to them, pulling off his helmet and kneeling down beside Bucky’s arm “Is this what you were yelling for help for?”

“Get it off!” Bucky shouted, then started screaming what sounded like Russian swear words.

“Okay, okay, I’ll see what I can do!” Tony reached out to grab Bucky’s arm but got slapped in the face instead. “Ow! Try to control your arm you-” he cur short and fell silent when Bucky gave anther agonised shriek of pain. “Okay, I need you to take deep breaths for me. Cap, hold him down.”

“What?”

“Hold him down, stop the rest of him from squirming. Can you do that or do I need the Hulk to come and sit on him?”

“I can do it.” Steve, ever so ever so grateful for the small margin in strength he had over Bucky, grabbed his right shoulder and put a knee on his chest. “You need to hold still, Buck.”

“I’m trying!” he hissed through gritted teeth. “I’m trying as hard as I-” the swearing was in English this time.

“Deep breaths, deep breaths. Look at me.” Steve tried to keep Bucky’s attention off his arm whilst himself watching Tony try and work out of the corner of his eye.

“Don’t let them hurt me,” Bucky whimpered suddenly, nostrils flaring and pupils dilating. Steve felt him begin to shake all over instead of just at his metal arm.

“They’re not going to hurt you, Bucky. They aren’t here. No one’s going to hurt you, you’re safe now.” Steve said, trying his hardest to make sure Bucky didn’t slip and fall under into that place that hurt him so badly.

“No cryo?”

“No cryo. No cryo ever, I promise!” Steve emphasised as he saw Tony manage to clamp the arm down and pulled out a screwdriver from somewhere.

A tiny portion of a grin showed up on Bucky’s face. “You gonna make sure they don’t put me in cryo again, ain’t ya Stevie? You can do that now, look after me?”

“I sure can, Buck. I sure can.” Steve smiled weakly and relaxed a little as he saw Tony pull a handful of wire out of Bucky’s arm, which seemed to stop the arm from shaking and Bucky from being in pain. “You good now?”

Bucky hesitated for a moment and then grinned. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good now. You can-” he made a vague movement with his right arm.

“Oh, yeah.” Steve let go of Bucky and took his knee off his chest. “Thought you were gonna under for a moment back there.”

Bucky pulled a wry smile and turned his head to look at Tony. “Thanks, Tony.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” Tony said, lips pursed. “I’ve had to break you arm so that it doesn’t work, doesn’t move and you can’t feel anything. I’ll have to have a closer look when we get back to the tower, see if I can find out what went wrong and if I can sort it out.” his tone was skeptical.

“You don’t sound like you’ll be able to.” Bucky said cleanly.   

Tony was silent for a moment. “I need to have another look at it.” he stood up. “I’d better go and help Bruce.” he flew off.

“Pull me up?” Bucky smiled up at Steve.

“Of course.” Steve grabbed Bucky’s right hand and pulled him up, putting an arm behind his back to help him stay up. “Can you walk?”

“Just about.” Bucky took one tottering step and clung tightly to Steve. “Stay with me.”

“Til the end of the line, buddy. Til the end of the line.”

The metal arm was a dead weight against Bucky’s side and Steve ended up acting as a balance as they stumbled their way across the rocky ground to a clearing where a helicopter was waiting for them. (Thank you, Bruce, for finally killing the organic-mass thing.)

Steve held Bucky all the way into the helicopter and the whole flight home, even if it wasn’t exactly necessary. Bucky seemed to barely notice it, too washed out, too shaken by his arm’s episode and too worried about what Tony might find upon closer inspection to really care. Not that he would care about Steve being so close to him anyway, but Steve may have felt more conscious of what he was doing if Bucky had been completely aware of what was going on.

Steve probably wouldn’t have glared at Bruce when he got a bit too close, though, had Bucky been fully aware of what was going on.

And maybe, just maybe, his heartstrings tugged a bit too much when they got back to the tower and Tony hurried Bucky down to the labs to start fiddling with his arm and maybe, just maybe, his heart skipped a beat and butterflies in his stomach started fluttering when Bucky turned back to call after him and refused to go down to the labs or have anything done to his arm without Steve being there. Steve abandoned his plans of showering, a clean set of clothes and then pacing around his apartment’s living room anxiously and went- muddy, bloody and damp- with Bucky, to hold his right hand and murmur encouragement and distractions the whole two hours, forty-seven minutes and thirty-eight seconds it took Tony to stabilise Bucky’s arm and decided that the safest thing for everyone in a five-mile radius was for Bucky’s arm to go as soon as possible and a new one with no explosives rigged inside to replace it.

-

It was three days later before Bucky’s old arm was taken off and a new arm was fitted. The new arm, all shiny and smooth, without HYDRA’s red star painted on the shoulder. It was better fitted and better suited for everyday tasks like holding a mug or opening a door. The old arm hadn’t been built to do menial tasks like that.

Bucky had been under for the whole procedure, which took seven hours and nine minutes. Steve should know; he’d been pacing up and down outside the med-bay the whole time.

Bucky had come round after half an hour and had been muttering groggy, post-anesthesia nonsense in Russian for the rest of the day. Steve sat in his room, hands clasped, just watching and guarding.

Natasha came to give him a hug and giggle at some of Bucky’s Russian. Sam came to check he’d eaten in the last 12 hours. Tony came to check that nothing had gone wrong yet and to blow his own trumpet, pointing state-of-the-art features in the design out to Steve.

A nurse came to check that Bucky hadn’t had an allergic reaction to the anesthesia. “He’s fine,” he assured Steve.

“Thank you.”

Somewhere around 11, when Bucky was fast asleep, Sam and Natasha came down together to try and bully Steve into going to bed.

“He won’t wake up until tomorrow morning.” Sam said. “You should go to bed, get something to eat, get some rest and you can come back again in the morning.”

Steve made no move to get out of his chair.

“He’ll be fine.” Nat assured him. “It’ll only be for a few hours.”

“But what if he wakes up?” Steve challenged. “What if he wakes up and he’s all by himself?”

“Did you promise him that you’d be here when he woke up?” Sam asked, sounding all too much like a teacher dealing with a five-year-old having a tantrum.

“No. But I’m not leaving him.”

“You need to sleep. Just because you’re a genetically enhanced super soldier doesn’t mean lack of sleep is no longer bad for you.” Natasha reminded him.

“Fine.”

Sam and Natasha furrowed their eyebrows. “Fine?”

“Yes. You want me to sleep, I’ll sleep. I’ll sleep here, on this chair, in this room, with Bucky right there.”

Sam and Natasha exchanged a look.

“I’m not leaving him.” Steve repeated.

“I’ll get you a blanket.” Sam walked over to a cupboard next to the wall and took a blanket out. He threw it to Steve. “Get some rest, soldier.”

“I outrank you!” Steve scowled, but clapped hands with Sam as he left anyway.

Natasha kissed his hair. “Night, Steve.”

“Night Tasha.”

It was a long time before Steve fell into a fitful sleep. He tossed and turned, waking up frequently from nothing at all.

Then Bucky woke him up.

“Steve!”

Steve was awake in an instant. “Bucky? Are you okay? Is everything alright do you want-”

“Get me Stark.” Bucky was looking at his arm with interest.

Steve flailed around, trying to get the blanket off.

“Scratch that. Stay here.”

Steve stopped moving. “Are you sure?”

“I want you here. And get out of that chair, you’re far too far away. I’m going to press this button because it looks like a bell.” Bucky pressed the button.

“Bucky, no!”

“Too late. I’ve already pressed it. Nothing bad’s happened. Nothing bad was going to happen.”

Steve managed to get out of the blanket and mover the chair towards Bucky’s bed.

A nurse entered. “Can I help, Sergeant Barnes?”

“Yeah, can you get Stark down here please?”

“I can try.”

“Forget it. Am I allowed breakfast?”

“Yes. Would you like me to get you some?”

Bucky nodded and the nurse left.

“Why didn’t you want the nurse to get Tony?”

“Since when has he listened to members of staff below him? Besides, there’s no way that nurse has got clearance for his floor.”

“You’re remarkably laid back.”

“Must be the drugs.” Bucky faltered. “I didn’t say anything crazy, did I?”

“Not in English. You were muttering in Russian a lot. Nat seemed to think it was funny but she didn’t tell me what you were saying so it was probably ‘fluffy washing machine or something.”

Bucky breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. JARVIS?”

“Yes Sergeant Barnes?”

“Get Stark.”

“Right away Sergeant Barnes.”

“The future is strange.” Bucky lay his head back on his pillow and closed his eyes. “This arm is strange.”

“Does it hurt?”

“No. It just doesn’t feel like an extra killing machine.” Bucky turned his head to stare at his arm. “HYDRA got to turn me into a killing machine and they got to stick stuff in my head and stuff on my side but they don’t have my head anymore and they don’t have my side anymore either. And now none of me is HYDRA’s. I’m my own person again and I don’t belong to anyone.

“I haven’t belonged to anyone except HYDRA or the Howling Commandos or the army in so long- _so_ long, Steve. And even before then I think I belonged to you, willingly, completely willingly, even if you didn’t know it.” he was silent for a moment. “And now I belong to you again.”

Steve had no idea what to do with himself at the arrival of this new information and though he would have liked to have just a couple more moments alone with Bucky to react to his statement, he was still grateful to Tony for walking in when he did.

“You’re awake!” Tony looked like he had just got out of bed and Steve was pretty sure he was still in pyjamas, thought with Tony Stark you never really knew. “How’s the arm?”

“It’s different.”

“That’s all you’re saying? Really? Of course it’s different, I made it and it actually works with proper wiring and plating and all sorts of other complicated tech things you won’t understand. Does it hurt?” Tony sat himself at the end of the bed and began examining the arm. “Oh this is way better than I remembered.”

“Can it shoot laser beams?”

“No. No special powers. You can feel pressure and heat. That’s it. That’s-” he gave a small sigh, “that’s the best I could come up with on short notice.”

“Will it work like the last one?”

“Do all the same things but better, smoother, properly waterproof, no malfunctions, glitches or blind spots.”

“What happened to the old one?”

“It’s on a bench in the lab. I wanna take a proper look at it.”

“I want to see it before you start playin’ with it.” Bucky said quietly. “Then I’d like to throw it out of a window.”

“Just don’t throw it onto anyone’s head.” Steve said quickly.

“I won’t. When can I start to train with it?” Bucky asked.

“Three days, at least. We need to keep an eye on it, make sure it heals properly and doesn’t get infected or rejected and we’ll need to run a few tests to make sure that the arm’s working properly and that your shoulder has taken everything alright.”

Bucky gave a grunt and stared into the distance.

-

When, four days later, Bucky was finally given the go-ahead to start training, he walked straight up to Tony’s lab, grabbed his old arm off a bench, walked to the nearest stairwell and tossed it over a banister so he could watch it crash onto the floor.

Steve hadn’t seen him smile so much in a very long time.

-

“Come and train with me. Down in the gym. I’ve been given permission.” Bucky said to Steve.

“Alright.”

They trained. Bucky quickly adapted to his new arm and moved with it as if it was flesh and blood and bone; perhaps even better. They wrestled and scrapped, neither of them ever quite using their whole strength.

Steve hated to think what would happen if he and Bucky had to truly attack each other.

“Don’t hold back.” Bucky said suddenly. “You’re stronger than that.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Then the bruises started falling, for both of them.

After an hour, Bucky picked up a water dispenser from the edge of the gym and smashed it open on his head.

“Is that the closest thing you’ve had to a shower in the past week?” Steve kept his distance.

Bucky nodded.

“You haven’t brushed your hair for a while, either, have you?”

“Nope.”

“Gross.”

Bucky looked up at Steve through his matted, soaking hair. His face was all sharp lines and rough edges but his smile was wide and joyous. “You hated brushing your hair!”

“That comb really hurt! And that doesn’t mean I enjoy other people not brushing their hair!”

“You saying you want me to brush my hair?”

“Yes.”

“I think I can manage that for my best guy.” Bucky’s grin made Steve’s heart flutter and in that moment he knew that he was head over heels in love with Bucky Barnes and probably had been for the past ninety years.

-

He couldn’t keep it secret.

It would eat him up from the inside if he did that and he knew that full well because it had already started gnawing at his heart.

He had to tell Bucky, or he may well die of a strained heart.

He _had_ to tell him.

The only problem was he’d never been much good with words or romantic feelings.

And everything was at risk by doing this.

-

“Would you hate me if I was in love with you? How would you feel if- no. That won’t work!” Steve sighed and curled his fingers around the rim of the sink, staring at himself in the mirror. “What am I going to do?” he whispered bleakly. “What am I even doing now?”

He turned away from the mirror, unable to stand the sight of dark circles under his eyes, the peeling skin on worried-at lips, and the mess his hair had become from tugging at it in desperation too many times. He rested his head on the edge of the sink and began murmuring to himself again. “Buck I love you. No, can’t say that! I think I’m sorta holdin’ a torch for you- no, no, no, no, no!”

He slammed the side of the bathroom cabinet with the palm of his hand, the most frustrated since he was last stuck ill in bed. The cabinet shook and something inside it fell over and smashed. Steve instantly felt guilty and reached up to open the mirrored doors so he could inspect the damage. He never got that far, though, as the sight of a figure in a white t-shirt with a metal arm and a pair of jeans standing in the doorway reflected in the mirror made him freeze. “Bucky?”

Bucky didn’t say anything, merely looked up from behind the long hair dangling around his long face.

Slowly, Steve turned around so his back was to the mirror and he was facing Bucky. “How long have you been here for?” he asked shakily, reaching behind his back to clutch at the sink again, palms slick with sweat and slipping on the smooth surface.

“Long enough.” Bucky’s voice was low and expressionless.

Steve’s heart sank and he started to talk, ignoring the lump in his throat. “Buck, I’m so sorry I am so so sorry I was going to tell you I was just trying to work out the best way to say it and I just didn’t want you to hate me and-”

“Is it true?” Bucky demanded, interrupting. “Do you mean it or is this something Tony put you up to?”

“I mean it.” tears welled in Steve’s eyes.

“Since when?”

“Since the start.”

“Why would I hate you for that?” Bucky whispered. “I’ve been in love with you since I was 14.”

He closed the space between them and cautiously cupped Steve’s face. “Can I kiss you?”

Steve nodded shakily and the next thing he knew, Bucky’s lips were on his. The kiss didn’t last long and Bucky pulled away to press their foreheads together. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“Can I-”

Steve stopped Bucky by grabbing the back of his neck and kissing him in the way he’d dreamed of doing since 1933.

-

“Where are they?” Tony tapped his foot impatiently and stared at the box of cereal Steve had placed on top of the fridge out of everyone else’s reach.

“Just stand on a stool and reach it.” Natasha suggested. “And who are you waiting for?”

“Steve, and by default Bucky, coz they don’t exactly come as single packages.” Tony continued to stare at the cereal.

Sam gave a low wolf whistle and Tony- along with Clint, Natasha, Pepper and Wanda- turned to stare at Steve and Bucky entering hand in hand and murmuring under their breath, Bucky in one of Steve’s hoodies and Steve in one of Bucky’s t-shirts. 

Tony, for one of the first times in his life, was utterly speechless.

“Is Barnes smiling?” Clint gaped. Are you sure that’s Barnes, Steve? I didn’t think he could smile!”

Steve beamed and put an arm around Bucky’s shoulders. “Mr Stark, Mr Wilson, Ms Romanoff, Mr Barton, Ms Potts and Miss Maximoff, I would like to present to you my boyfriend, Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, otherwise known as Bucky.”

And then, in front of all of them, Steve kissed Bucky hard.

“Not in front of the child!” Clint shrieked and clapped his hands over Wanda’s eye.

Sam and Nat both whistled and Pepper smiled smugly to herself.

Tony’s words returned to him. “Yeah that’s all well and good, Captain Icicle, congratulations on getting yourself a boyfriend, just keep the noise down and COULD YOU PLEASE GET ME THE CEREAL?”

Steve pulled away and smiled. “I can.” he handed Tony the box of cereal.

“Don’t put it up there again.” Tony said firmly. “It’s annoying. Now you can go back to swapping spit with Bucky; just, like Clint said, not in front of Wanda.”

“Is that an order?” Steve quirked an eyebrow.

“You’d do it whether I told you to or not.”

“Too right I would.” Steve kissed Bucky again.

“You gonna kiss him like that every morning in front of all of us?” Sam asked, grinning.

“Hell yeah.”

“LANGUAGE!"


End file.
